that it was in consequence of the lax morality of the Corinthians that he visited them in grief).
4, The reasons for holding that this visit (which we shall call the “Intermediate Visit’) took place are as follows. We have seen that St. Paul’s first visit to Corinth is recorded in Acts xviii, Another visit is mentioned in Acts xx. 3, viz., that which was sub- sequent to the two Canonical Epistles to the Corinthians, and which was in contemplation while he was writing both. Its date was 55-56. But it appears from 2 Cor. xii. 14, xiii. 1, that this was his third visit; and hence a visit to Corinth must have been paid between the years 50 and 55 (probably towards the end of the period, say in the autumn of 54), of which no account is given in the Acts? It is all but impossible to fit in this visit if we do not suppose it to have been paid from Ephesus; and it would have been an easy matter for St. Paul to have undertaken this. Ephesus was only a week or ten days’ sail from Corinth, and on the receipt of ill news it would have been the most natural thing in the world that he should thus cross the Aigean hastily to set matters right. It appears distinctly from 2 Cor. ii. 1 that this visit was a painful one, and such as he would not wish again to have experience of. And, further, the language of xii. 21, xiii. 2, suggests that the trouble which caused this Painful Visit was not faction or schism, but unchastity of life among his converts.
5. St. Paul thereafter returned to Ephesus and wrote, probably after no long interval, a letter which is now lost. It is mentioned in 1 Cor. v. 9; and it contained, he tells us, injunctions to the Corinthian Christians “to keep no company with fornicators,” in- junctions (probably) suggested to him by what he had seen on his recent visit. That visit had been one of stern rebuke rather than of counsel ; and it is quite intelligible that on his return he should desire to put in writing his deliberate advice. There is no indication that anything had happened up to this point which suggested the rise of schisms or of party spirit at Corinth. Indeed it may well have been that his visit, ἐν λύπῃ (2 Cor. ii. 1), was the proximate cause of the schisms with which the Church at Corinth was soon to be troubled ; for the attempt to enforce discipline for lapses in morality
1 This, indeed, has been denied by Paley (Hore Pauline, chap. iv., § xi.) and, recently, by Prof. Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveller, p. 275) and Dr. Robertson (Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, νο]. i., p. 494) ; but I cannot think that their explanations of 2 Cor. xii. 14, xiii. 1, as alluding to a visit intended, but not paid, are satisfactory.
*The language of 1 Cor. xvi. 7, οὐ θέλω γὰρ ὑμᾶς ἄρτι ἐν παρόδῳ ἰδεῖν, seems to suggest that his last visit to Corinth had been a brief and hasty one.